I find so many headlines confusing these days—in all facets surrounding us. So I wondered: what would happen if we zoomed out—say, fifty years out? What might we see?
I sifted through the last half-century of political data. Ten presidents. Dozens of Congresses. Thousands of federal judges. And what I found… surprised me. Not for its drama, but for its lack of it.
Since 1975, Republicans have held the White House for 26 years. Democrats for 24. That’s nearly a perfect split.
In the House of Representatives? 28 years Democratic, 22 Republican.
The Senate? The exact same: 28 for the Democrats, 22 for the Republicans. Remarkably even.
Then I looked at federal judicial appointments. Surely this would be skewed?
Republicans appointed 1,202 federal judges.
Democrats: 1,204.
Photo finish.
And what about those moments when one party controls it all—the presidency, the House, and the Senate?
Eight years for Republicans.
Eight years for Democrats.
Then I turned my attention to deportations. Here, the results were counterintuitive.
Republican Presidents:
Reagan – 168,364
Bush – 141,326
Bush 43 – 2,012,539
Trump – 935,000
Total: ~3.26 million
Average per year: ~162,861
Democratic Presidents:
Clinton – 869,646
Obama – 5,300,000
Biden – 1,500,000 (as of mid-2024)
Total: ~7.67 million
Average per year: ~479,353
Twice as many deportations under Democratic presidents.
It seems the political system has a steady back-and-forth cadence. Power changes hands. Agencies persist. The rhythm continues. It made me wonder: what else might we be misreading—not because the facts are hidden, but because they’re hiding in plain sight?
Take the Trump years, for example: when we zoom out, not as anomalous as we’ve been told. Institutions like the UN, NATO, and WTO—pillars of the post-war liberal order—have grown thick with bureaucracy and slow to self-correct. Some might say captured. Criticism of these bodies wasn’t new, but rarely had it been so pointed.
NATO, too, revealed its imbalances. For decades, allies quietly underfunded their defense budgets, counting on the U.S. to foot the bill. Trump, in his way, said what many had muttered privately: if we’re in this together, act like it.
Immigration? America has long operated with a kind of paradox—proud of its immigrant roots, yet strangely passive about the laws governing entry. Border control elsewhere is rigorous. Here, it’s been muddled. The Trump administration tried to draw a clearer line.
Trade revealed its own contradictions. Free trade was free when others sold to us. Less so when we tried to sell to them. Trump’s critiques weren’t so different from those voiced in the 1980s—by Trump himself, in fact, in full-page ads calling out unfair trade deals and subsidies abroad. He was picking up a thread he’d been pulling at for decades.
In 2024, Trump received more votes than any sitting Republican in history. He improved his support across multiple demographics, and did so under the weight of investigations, impeachment, and a hostile media environment. For many, this was less a fluke than a confirmation: whatever one thinks of his style, his message had staying power.
One reason? Many Americans—especially outside the coasts—felt unseen. Dislocated by the economy. Dismissed by the culture. They didn’t want a perfect president. They wanted someone who noticed. The political class, and much of the media, misread this. They read the coasts. He read the interior.
In an economy where capital accrues faster than effort, Trump gave voice to those who felt shut out. Heads I win, tails you lose. Bailouts for the big. Layoffs for the rest. The rules seemed to be for someone else.
And unlike the first time around, his team now returns with a plan—an actual roster, ready to staff agencies and implement a specific governing agenda. Whether one agrees or not, this is not improvisation.
Which brings us to the heart of it: disagreement is not disloyalty. We’ve entered an era where everything we dislike gets labeled extreme—authoritarian, fascist, un-American. But maybe it’s just the other side of the argument. Just as not every progressive idea is socialism in disguise, not every conservative policy is a threat to democracy. Some of it is just governance. Some of it is just the next round. I do have personal policy preferences on all of these issues of course and vote accordingly, however these notes are more about the discourse than policy.
Zooming out doesn’t solve everything. But it helps us breathe. The rough and tumble of the Jeffersonian era was pretty feisty, too.
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